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The most spectacular public vaccine-skeptical characters, like Tucker Carlson or Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), understand this. They don’t need to spread demonstrable lies. They can focus on foreign cases of serious side effects at night. Or they can selectively present the results of scientific research or government communications in ways that suggest something of concern about the virus or vaccine. Or they can completely ignore the scientific question ranting the government’s vaccine push is really about social control. Like any illusionist, they know that the most powerful tool available is not misinformation, but misdirection.
Members of the media and political establishments often miss this subtle distinction. Sometimes, “misinformation” is used by people to use any material used to prevent a shot, whether objectively false or not. Recently New York Times Article Regarding anti-vaxxer agent Joseph Mercola, for example, under the headline “Coronavirus misinformation online most influential diffuser,” Mercola warned in a Facebook post, suggesting that the Pfizer vaccine was only 39 percent effective against infection with the Delta variant. . Mercola was accurately conveying the findings of an actual investigation covered main news. The Times the article, however, did not mention another finding from the study that the vaccine is 91 percent effective against serious diseases.
Definitely Mercola — his osteopathic doctor he made money the sale of “natural” health products advertised as an alternative to vaccines – it would serve its followers by sharing that data point. Receiving cherries to sow doubts about vaccines is a real dangerous statistic. But to gather this example under the umbrella of misinformation is to flee from the concept. Misinterpretation is not the same thing as misinformation, and that is not just a semantic distinction. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are under tremendous pressure not to spread dangerous fakes on their platforms. They often receive attention from established media organizations. The development of free online expression would be worrying, in the name of preventing real-world damage, if platforms were to remove messages that are not objectively false as “misinformation”. It is enough to distinguish between the scale of truth and falsehood. It would be reckless to ask platforms to take responsibility for judging whether or not they are about the user interpretation whether the facts (their opinion on the subject of public policy) is acceptable or not.
“It’s certain that misinformation makes things worse,” said behavioral psychologist Gordon Pennycook of Queen’s University. “There are people who believe things that are fake, and they read those things on the internet. That’s for sure. “But, Pennycook continued,” the more you focus on that, the less you talk about ways to question people in ways that have nothing to do with misinformation. “
In his research, Pennycook conducts experiments to find out how people actually respond to misinformation online. In one examination, he and his colleagues proved whether the claim would convince people after explaining it online in a fake news headline. (Sample headline: “Mike Pence: Gay Conversion Therapy Saved My Marriage.”) In one phase of the experiment, the number of people exposed to false news headlines increased the claim from 38 to 72. You can look at that. and say that online misinformation increases belief by 89%. Or, it can be noted that there were 903 participants in general, which means that only 4% of the holders operated.
The current debate over vaccine misinformation seems to mean that we sometimes live in an 89 percent world, but the number 4 percent is the most helpful guide. It would still be a serious problem if a small percentage of Facebook or YouTube users suffered from vaccine misinformation. They are more likely to refuse to be vaccinated, to get sick, and to spread the virus — and perhaps their false beliefs — to others. At the same time, it’s important to keep that in mind somewhere third part They are still choosing not to get vaccinated among American adults. Even if Facebook and YouTube removed all anti-vaxx content from the platforms at night, that would remove a single bite from a much bigger problem.
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